Welcome to Learn the Sky, your online resource for learning about the stars and constellations.
Welcome! My name is Janine and in this video we're going to review the star cluster known
as the Pleiades, sometimes called the seven sisters stars. I love this group of stars
because it's so easy to point out in the sky. If you happen to have magnification such as a pair
of binoculars or a telescope it's really gorgeous to view. Scientist today call this Messier 45, but
it really has a ton of different names depending upon the culture that you're looking at. It was
really, really helpful to predict different weather patterns and seasonal patterns over the course of
time for many different cultures. It's located in the constellation known as Taurus the Bull. If
you want to learn more about how to find Taurus in the sky, be sure to go see that detailed video.
This, right here, is a picture of Taurus. The thing that probably stands out to you
is the Pleiades Star Cluster. In fact, many people call this the Little Dipper because it does
resemble the pattern of the asterisms known as the Big Dipper. Sometimes they just call it
the Little Dipper because it's like a tiny miniaturized version of the Dippers because
it does have that shape to it. But really this is its own group of stars that were
all born together and they are traveling together through space as well. So in this video we're going
to explore how to find it- make sure that you can recognize it in different photos. So when you do go
outside to observe it in the sky, you can recognize it. Then we're going to take a closer look at
the brighter stars that are in this star cluster and we're gonna look at the nine brightest stars.
Keep in mind that there's really over a thousand stars in this star cluster. So let's
get started. The Pleiades Star Cluster is a very famous one and it has been viewed by humans for
thousands of years and the earliest records we see of it date back to 17 500 years ago there's
records of this in the lascal caves in france and it's also located next to another star cluster
known as the heidi's star cluster which makes up the face of taurus aldebaran the brightest star
antares is not a part of heidi's but this is a star cluster that's about 150 light years away
from earth so it's very well studied and there are so many legends and names of this star cluster
ancient mesopotamians egyptians chinese greek roman polynesians and so many more cultures have
identified this tiny little group of stars and it has lots of names the seven sisters the japanese
call it subaru makalii for the hawaiians matariki for new zealanders and so on and so forth so
there are so many names and one of the really interesting things i just recently learned is
that it's part of an asterism called the golden gate of the ecliptic which is both the heidi's
and the pleiades and the reason this is called the golden gate is because the planets moon
and sun pass through this particular area of the sky because taurus is a zodiacal constellation
that means that the sun moon and planets all pass through it so if we take a look at this star map
you can see the ecliptic line right here and this is where the pleiades are and if we were to zoom
in here a little bit you can see that it's also called m45 and it's located next to the heidi's
so if we were to point out what this actually looks like i love this picture and i tilted it
so it mirrors what it looks like in the sky so here are the pleiades and then here is where the
heidi's are so if we zoom up a little bit right here this is the asterism known as the golden
gate of the ecliptic and i eventually will have a video on this topic because
it's just so interesting to me and it's also a fairly recent uh discovery of mine so i'll
take me time so to research it but here i found this picture which shows you both the pleiades
and the heidi's right here and you can see the moon you can see jupiter
and venus right here and you can see that in this direction is where they are they're not quite in
the golden gate of the ecliptic but they're nearby and i thought this photo really just demonstrates
that why it is called the golden gate of the ecliptic since these objects pass through
the pleiades is classified as an open star cluster and it's estimated to be about 444 light years
away there are two different types of star clusters open star clusters and globular
clusters and if you want to learn more about that topic be sure to go see that video so
we're going to go through these pictures really quickly and i just want you to spot the pleiades
because if you can find them then you can start to find the other constellations that surround it so
here we have a picture can you find the pleiades it's not the brightest thing in this photo but
it definitely stands out here's where the pleiades are this is the moon traveling through it and then
here i actually i would probably say this is a planet if this were a moon i think it would be
really difficult to capture all of these bright stars even though it's a long exposure photograph
and then right here is orion you can use the belt stars of orion to guide you towards taurus here's
another photo as you look at the night sky are you able to find taurus are you able to find
the pleiades i can see it right here you can use orion the belt stars to aim you towards taurus
and then there's that little group and you can kind of see how it does look like a little dipper
here's another gorgeous photo i have of the pleiades with a comet going through and it has
been observed from the international space station as well so are you able to see the pleiades right
here i just think this is such a gorgeous shot and in fact i have another one of them as well
so as you're looking at the night portion of the sky hopefully you're starting to recognize it
in the next portion of this video we're going to look at the brighter stars of this
star cluster but keep in mind that scientists have identified over a thousand stars that are
in this group this star cluster group but we're only going to really look at the brighter ones
how gorgeous is this photo by the way i just love it so let's go ahead and get started looking at
the stars going from brightest to dimmest in terms of the ones that we can visually see in the sky
so first we have alcioni that's the brightest the second brightest is atlas then there's
electra and in fact in mythology terms uh atlas was the father of the seven sisters and then we
have elektra then maya merope taguetta pleoni and that was the mother of the seven sisters
celino is the next one and steropy so those are the stars that we are going to talk about
it's not the seven sisters there's actually nine because it's the whole family here but these are
the brighter stars in this group so let's dive in a little bit deeper and learn about these
in greater detail so alcione is a b-class blue star in fact all of these stars are b cats
blue stars and they all formed together it's estimated that they're 100 million years old
and this one is a multi-star system i say multi-star because i couldn't nail down how many
stars are actually a part of this group i found some of the literature a little confusing on that
but it's estimated to be 440 light years away but plus or minus 50 or so light years in fact
all of these distances have plus or minus quite a few light years so you're going to see a range
and the distances are also different depending upon the sources that you consult at least
that's what i found during my research our next brightest star is atlas again a b-class blue star
and it's proposed to be a binary star system but i couldn't confirm that perhaps with further
study it will be confirmed in the future and in the mythology stories atlas was the daughter
of the seven sisters next we have elektra this is the third brightest star in this
star cluster and also a b-class blue star and what this what that even means is that
these stars are much bigger than the sun and they're much hotter so they burn blue a different
color and this star is known for its fast rotation so when stars spin and have a really really fast
rotation what we observe is that they're flattened at the poles and then stretched at the equator so
this one has a star rotation of about one and three quarter days so that is really
really fast our own sun rotates about between 25 to 35 days and the rotation is different at
the equator than it is at the poles because it's made of gas it's not solid so it rotates unevenly
our next star the fourth brightest star is known as maya and this is a another b-class blue star
and it's called a chemically peculiar star in the literature and what that even means
is that there's an unusual abundance of certain types of metals so in this case
maya tends to be helium weak but it's very high in manganese and it's known for its reflection
nebula that surrounds it which is called the maya nebula and if we zoom in here that's what the maya
nebula looks like it's very very beautiful the light is reflected off these gases that are here
moving forward we have merope this is a b-class blue star i first heard of this name ropey in
when i was reading harry potter and i noticed with harry potter that many of some of the names that
she chooses are chosen after names of stars or constellations in the sky but this one is
interesting because it's surrounded by the murobi nebula which we are going to zoom in here right
there is where it looks like and it's really really gorgeous and the hubble telescope
has really zoomed in on this particular area and has shown us some gorgeous features
in this particular nebula our next star is called taguetta and again b-class blue star larger and
hotter and a different color than our own sun and this is estimated to be a double star system next
we have pleoni i hope i'm saying that correctly i get nervous with star star name pronunciations but
this one is a binary star and in greek mythology this was the um this was the mother of the seven
sisters and this also has a really fast rotation at 11.8 hours so since it is rotating so fast that
means it's flattened at the poles and then it would bulge at the equator next we have celino
this is also a b-class blue star are you repeating that with me as i say it at this point
uh this one is very large as well estimated to be four times it has four times the radius
of the sun and then our final bright member of this star group is steropy it used to be called
asteropy but is more called steropy i'm not sure why the name shifted but this is estimated to be
a double star system as well i couldn't confirm if it's a binary star system or if it's an
optical double but all these stars right here are grouped together and i don't know why i went there
they are grouped together and they are traveling together so one other thing i wanted to go over
before i wrap up this video is something called averted vision averted vision is a technique
that you can use when you're stargazing and the pleiades star cluster is a perfect
perfect object to practice this technique with and what averted vision is is when you
look at very faint objects using your peripheral vision and the way this works is that when when
when objects enter into our eye so light and color when they come through what happens is that in
this portion of our eye we have color detecting cells this is known as cone cells but on the side
of our eye in this portion and right here we have rod cells and these are light detecting
cells so what you want to do when you're looking at the pleiades try looking to the side of the
pleiades instead of directly at it and when you do that when you look to the side of it here or
here and not directly at it you'll find that it's it becomes sharper when you're looking at it so
this this is a technique that astronomers use when stargazing and you don't have to do this just with
the pleiades you can do this with any objects try looking to the side of them and you'll find that
they'll come in sharper relief we've come to the end of the video about the pleiades star cluster
i hope you've enjoyed learning more details about this particular group of stars this probably
won't be the only video i do about the pleiades because it would be really difficult to cover
everything about this star cluster particularly the mythologies because there's just so many of
them but i really had some fun researching about all these bright stars and what some of their
characteristics are so i encourage you to keep going outside get some practice with finding the
pleiades it really is one of the easiest things to find in the sky i often say use orion to
help you find taurus you can use the belt stars to aim you towards taurus but really the pleity
tarz is easy enough to find just because of the pleiades and you can use this star cluster to find
other groups of stars in the sky and it just gives you a sense of orientation of where everything
else is so i wish you clear skies as you go outside remember it just takes time patience
and practice to stargaze and learn the star patterns so i wish you luck and keep looking up
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